Why are some agents better than others – Episode #231

Todd: Hello! Welcome to Todd Miller TV. Joined here today with Oana, and we’re gonna talk today about Why Real Estate in actually not easy to do. Oana so, I checked Facebook really quick before I came in this morning, and no kidding there 3 and a half like 400 of my 1,100 Fcaebook friends are Real Estate agents. They’re from all over. But 3 or 4 of them had put quotes basically stating “There’s so few houses on the market, I’m having to make offers on these houses, I can’t get anything accepted, I’m frustrating.” And I looked at us with like, you know, us and our team have about a 180 houses under contract. And I’m thinking, you know it’s really not that hard. You just/they’re not doing it the right way. So that’s the first conversation I wanna have. First talk about the agents side of it. ‘Cause there’s a consumer side of it. There’s a buyer side. Let’s talk about the agent side of it first. What do you think about it? Do you think Real Estate is really that tremendously difficult and it’s just impossible to get a house? Oana: I think Real Estate is like any other profession. You have people that are at top of their game, and you have everybody else. Todd: Okay. Oana: So people who are good at what they do, have a couple hundred properties under contract like our team does. People who have maybe 2 or 3 properties that they sell a year, Those are the people that are having such a hard time out there. Because they don’t know. They don’t do enough business to understand the changes in the market, to understand trends, and to understand how to get a deal put together in this market. Todd: Okay. Interesting fact to it: There were more homes sold last month than a year ago last month. Oana: Right. Todd: So if sales are up, there aren’t a bunch more Real Estate agents, how can they be saying it’s harder? I mean it doesn’t make sense to me that if we’re selling more houses that should mean more sales for those agents, but they’re/what I’m hearing as the opposite; they’ve sort of got it in their head that it’s harder to do the whole process. Oana: It’s like anything else. 10% do 90% of business. Todd: Okay. Oana: So yes. That 10% is actually doing more business because they’ve got it down. They understand how to get it done. Todd: What do you say to the agent who say “Well, in the past, there were so many houses, it met all criteria. we just went look at them and pick the one we want and put an offer and got accepted.”? Oana: Well, It takes a little more than that. It really does. Todd: Okay. So, Real Estate is not an easy job.? Oana: Real Estate is easy if you know what you’re doing. Like anything else. If you’re a novice at it, If you’re not professioned at it, then it’s very difficult. Todd: So, I wanna now talk about consumer a little bit. Because I’m starting to/We have 2 different kinds of buyers that we work with. One, we work with long term; they’re reasonable, they listen to what we say. And then the other type are unreasonable and we stop working with them rather quickly. People make judgments based on value and other things based on comparison. So when you show them a house, that was worth $300,000 6 years ago. That’s today worth $100,000. Right? That’s what it’s worth. And that’s what they offer on the house. But then an appraisal comes in it says it’s worth/that the appraisal says $95,000. And then they freak out and wanna drop the price and then they left the deal fall apart basically ’cause/what do you say to those people? Oana: An appraiser a few years ago thought it was worth $300,000 and now you got the same appraiser,now he thinks it’s worth $95,000. So an appraisal is always looking back. We are always looking forward. Okay? So what that buyer has to do is they have to look forward. They have to pay for that house with that house is worth for them. In our market place there are a lot of opportunities for you to still get financing even when the property doesn’t get appraised. So that means if you’re buying a Fanni Mae property, you can use Home Path Financing. That bypasses the appraisal so you don’t have to deal with that and you can get the home that you want. If you’re going to be stuck on appraised value you’re probably going to loose out of properties because remember, we sell properties for what buyers are willing to pay not for what an appraisal says the property is worth. Todd: So, people/a lot of people I talked to, almost everybody is/across the country is aware that the Real Estate in Las Vegas is a lot of negative press. And people all the time when I tell them/that I mean Real Estate in Las Vegas they say “Oh my gosh! It’s terrible there like Real Estate collapsing and all that stuff.” So what people expect is now they see a house worth $100,000 and they get it in their head and go “Wait, Real Estate is bad. I need to get a discount. I need to get it for less because the market’s gonna fall or it’s somehow bad.” How do you/what do you say to a person who’s sort of watching the/remembering something they heard in the news a couple years ago? Oana: The bottomline of the Las Vegas Real Estate market is that it is a very active market. That means that you have to be in the market in order to understand what’s happening. And it moves very quickly. Real Estate market is neither good nor bad. It’s simply active. And it is our actions that make it good or bad. Todd: Okay. Oana: Okay? No matter who you are in the Real Estate market, you can make money in any market because it all depends on you actions. Not with the market’s doing, but what you’re doing. We have an active market which means that it is froth with opportunities. An active market is a market full of opportunity. Todd: What do you say to that consumer, this doesn’t happen very often to me, I’ve heard other agents say this happens to them. They say that a person come to buy a 70 or $80,000 house. And then they’ll ask the agent for a piece of the commission. ‘Cause what they’re saying is, “I’ve read a thing online that said “agents are desperate because they’re not making any money so you should ask then for some of the commission on the transaction, they’ll kick it back to you somehow.” Oana: Well, so an agent who can’t negotiate their own pay is going to negotiate a good deal for you? Really? If they can’t negotiate a food on their own table, they’re gonna negotiate the food on yours? Todd: Okay. Probably not. Oana: That’s not somebody I would wanna do business with. Todd: Do you think realistically though, if you know, commission on a $70-80,000 maybe $2,000 maybe. Oana: Agents are not making enough money on these deals to really be able to afford to give the client money back, and really than an agent is more incentiviced to get you to buy a higher priced property and to not be as willing to negotiate a lower price for you because he’s already kicking money back to you and he’s getting paid a portion of that sales price. So it doesn’t make sense. Todd: Okay. Alright. So, the low sale prices, the negative press, the agents who are over dramatizing the fact that they can’t get any deals accepted, when actually there are more sales last year that this year and we actually have more buyer side sales this year that we had the same month last year. Oana: Okay. Todd: All 4 of those things like you said, are neither good nor bad, it’s just what it is. Oana: Exactly! And actually it’s good. It’s a good thing because in any market, you have people who get good at what they’re doing and that weeds out the people who are not. And they go and find another line of work. Todd: I like that. Okay, good! So anyway, I just wanna share that with you. It started from something I read form Facebook and I was a little bit shocked ’cause we have an agent here who have 3 buyer sides under contract this week all by himself, one guy! And so I’m thinking you know, if you’re not doing that then you’re doing something wrong. So, and if you’re a consumer and your agent isn’t doing it, well then, maybe that is the problem. So anyway, that is my update for today and hope to see you on another video. Thanks.